I have been following a vegan diet now since the 1980s, and find it not only healthier, but also much more attractive than the chunks of meat that were on my plate as a child.

Chicken fat, beef fat, fish fat, fried foods - these are the foods that fuel our fat genes by giving them raw materials for building body fat.

In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either.

We help people to begin truly healthful diets, and it is absolutely wonderful to see, not only their success, but also their delight at their ability to break old habits and feel really healthy for a change.

If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.

I wrote this book to show how the body actually works. I also wanted to relate the findings of our own research studies.

In our research we use low-fat, vegan diets and find that the resulting weight-loss is about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds per week, week after week after week. We also see dramatic improvements in cholesterol.

A vegan diet takes care of most of what we need to do. But you'll also want to minimize the use of oils generally, because while olive oil and other vegetable oils are better for your heart than chicken fat, they are as fattening as animal fats.

Meat consumption is just as dangerous to public health as tobacco use... It's time we looked into holding the meat producers and fast-food outlets legally accountable.